


Run, Nora, Run

by creatureofhobbit



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:13:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27806635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creatureofhobbit/pseuds/creatureofhobbit
Summary: Nora's attempts to run back and forward in time before she meets Barry.
Kudos: 5
Collections: The 100 Multifandom Challenge





	Run, Nora, Run

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eternal_moonie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternal_moonie/gifts).



Thawne had persuaded her to start small, to try and send herself back only a short time period rather than try and send herself straight to 2019. While there was a part of Nora that just wanted to send herself to 2019 straight away, to just get to her father without all these other trips, she had to admit he was right, that she needed to practice, get used to it before going all the way back then. She still didn’t have full control of her speed at that point; an attempt to send herself back to 2019 could just as easily lead to her getting stuck in 1619. So she’d started by trying to send herself back three hours, just so that she knew she could.

She’d looked around her, seen the time on the clock; 9:15am, and had picked up the newspaper, seen the same story about the same sex scandal involving the vice president of the United States, that same day’s date on the paper.

Nora had done it. She’d run back in time to three hours earlier on that same day.

She hadn’t planned for this.

Nora should have known this was possible, had she given it more thought; attempting to travel back into a time where Lia was still alive, there was always the possibility that she would see her again. Yet when she had managed to travel back to a year earlier, and Lia had approached her outside work, Nora found herself unprepared for it.

Lia had walked up to her and launched into a conversation as though it was only a day since they had last seen each other, which, of course, it was for her, started talking about the plans she had for the weekend to go away with her ex, Sam, and meet the family for the first time. Nora remembered this, remembered Lia coming back upset because Sam’s father had persistently addressed her by her previous girlfriend’s name and Sam having basically expected her to suck it up and see the funny side of that. The relationship hadn’t lasted long after that, with Sam having eventually reconciled with the aforementioned ex, Lia finding out via seeing them in the background of her cousin’s photo on social media, and Nora having never been entirely convinced they had properly broken up in the first place.

Nora still remembered the long nights of sitting up with Lia getting drunk, trying to persuade her not to call Sam and yell abuse down the phone. As she listened to Lia chatting excitedly about the relationship, there was a part of her wanting to yell at Lia to turn around and run, to try and save her from the pain that had resulted. Another part of her knew that wouldn’t work, that she couldn’t stop Lia’s bad relationship from happening, because it already had happened.

Lia had actually said something, not long after that relationship ended, about how she had picked up on Nora not liking Sam, and Nora hadn’t understood where that had come from at the time, since they’d always got along pretty well until Sam’s cheating had come out. Now she realises, Lia must have been remembering this interaction with the Nora from the future, the Nora who knew how this relationship was going to pan out, and obviously wasn’t hiding her feelings at all well.

She had to get out of there, be careful not to do anything that would screw up the timeline, not yet, not now. But maybe she could fix this, once she was back from 2019, find some way of bringing Lia back.

Nora had been nervous about her first trip back to the future, not knowing what kind of future she was sending herself into. Would she discover a future where her plan had worked, where she had managed to stop her father disappearing in 2024, grown up with both parents in her life, maybe even had a good relationship with her mother? Or would she find herself in a world where nothing had changed, where Barry Allen was still missing, she and Iris were still estranged?

She could find out the answers to these questions very easily when she made it there, by going to the Flash Museum, by going to her family home and watching from afar. But at the same time, Nora wasn’t sure she wanted to find out that way. If she visited her own future, and learned that she was not successful in preventing Barry’s disappearance, Nora wondered whether this knowledge would end up persuading her out of making the trip back to 2019, or whether it would make her more determined to go back, do what she could to change her past.

She’d go there just long enough to prove that she could, not interact with anyone she knew and then head straight back home. At least that was what Nora intended to do at first. But once she found herself in the year 2061, a part of her was unable to resist the old familiar path to the Flash Museum, checking out the exhibits to see if they were the same as the ones she was used to seeing throughout her life.

The display case remained unchanged; the story still told of the Flash’s disappearance in 2024 as Nora had feared. She should never have come here. But as she looked at it, she realised that maybe she shouldn’t have expected anything else. The exhibition wouldn’t necessarily show any changes she had made to the past, because she hadn’t changed them yet, so it was impossible to know at this point what was yet to come.

When Nora made it back to her present after spending some time with her father in the past, after solving that one case he’d never managed to solve, she’d get back here and see that the display had changed; there would be stories of cases beyond 2024, a future for the Flash. Maybe even him helping her take down Godspeed.

She couldn’t let herself become discouraged; not now. She still had work to do.


End file.
